Holocaust survivor Arek Hersh told pupils to value their rights when he visited Benton Park School in Rawdon.

The 86-year-old met with year 11 History and Religious Studies students to share a Kosher lunch and talk about his experience as a concentration camp prisoner.

He told pupils how he had he lost his mother Bluma, father Szmuel, a sister, two brothers and his first love in the camps and had eaten burned leather from the soles of his shoes to survive.

Student Fran Talbot said: “He is such a lovely man. Everyone who met him was deeply touched.

“I make off- hand comments about ‘being starving’ and ‘losing the will to live’ but here is a man who has genuinely lived through all of this.”

And she added: “When we asked what message he would give to the young people of today, he told us that we were the future, we should value our right to vote in democratic elections when we come of age and ignore dangerous extremist parties.”

Mr Hersh, from Leeds, has written a book about his life A Detail of History and has had a documentary made about him by Unison Films called Arek.